A mother’s love fans son’s will to survive

A mother’s love fans son’s will to survive

By ERIC ADLER

The Kansas City Star

On the fifth floor of the University of Kansas Hospital, in a corner room in the burn unit, a mother leans close to her son’s right ear.

He lies on the bed, eyes closed. Burns cover 90 percent of his body. Tubes snake from veins and his throat into humming machines.

“Josh?” Lisa Ott Battagliola whispers.

Whether her boy, Josh Langton, 27, can hear her, she doesn’t know. Even if he can, the memory of her presence may be lost in the fog of pain medication.

It doesn’t matter.

“Josh?” she says again.

Because if there’s one simple Mother’s Day lesson that Battagliola — a 4-foot-11-inch mom given to form-fitting jeans and high heels, born 50 years ago to a tough Las Vegas construction family — has learned through years of family hardships, through ups and down with her eldest son, it’s this:

“At the end of the day, tell your child, no matter how old they are, that you love them. Because no matter how old they are, they’re your child. Make sure they know you love them. One day you may get that 4 o’clock in the morning phone call.”

Josh has a wife, Jamie, and a 3-year-old daughter, Lilly, to live for. He was a soldier who survived Iraq and the PTSD nightmares that later haunted him.

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